At the moment applications have to provide an icon >= 32x32px in size to be included in the AppStream metadata and shown in the software center. This is *tiny* on a HiDPI screen, so should I mandate that all applications ship a 64x64 (and ideally, 128x128/64x64@2 also) icon for the shell and gnome-software, or should I just pad+scale icons for the HiDPI case and make them look ridiculous?
I don't think we can, or should, design a software center to accept the lowest common denominator when it comes to icon sizes; we're doing really well now with AppData coverage[1] and I think we can raise the quality of upstream and packaged icons in the same way.
My proposal would make 64x64 the smallest icon size we show in the software center, and this will still be slightly blurry[2] in the HiDPI case. This would affect 539 (over half of all desktop applications) packaged in Fedora. It's clear we can't just do nothing, as more and more devices will have HiDPI screens, and more and more icons will look crazy small and fuzzy.
I don't think it's a good idea to mass-file 539 bugs, nor do I want to contact 539 upstream maintainers. 127 packages only ship a 32x32 icon, and that might be a good starting point for contacting upstreams or filing bugs.
Ideas? Comments? Affected packages attached as a text file.
Richard
[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2014/09/25/appstream-progress-in-september/ [2] https://ryanlerch.fedorapeople.org/software-blurry2.png